Mozilla is testing a free, integrated VPN service in Firefox that will complement Mozilla's existing paid VPN service.
Mozilla's support page states that the company has been working on its “IP address hiding” technology for over two weeks. However, Mozilla has since renamed the page “Firefox VPN” to demonstrate a new experimental beta feature present in the browser. Mozilla says the technology will be free, but is only being offered to a small, randomly selected group of test users.
A free VPN service will obviously complement paid VPN service from Mozilla which Mozilla already offers. However, our tests showed that Mozilla's paid VPN service is somewhat lacking.
Integrating a VPN service into your browser has been a feature of niche browsers, including Mozilla, for years. In 2019 Mozilla begins testing Firefox private networkA VPN-like service that hides the user's IP address. The trial was part of a beta program and the technology was never commercialized. Opera has also launched a more sophisticated integrated VPN service.. In March Vivaldi teamed up with Proton for built-in VPN in the browser.
Mozilla's VPN service will route your web traffic through Mozilla-managed VPN servers, and you'll need a Mozilla account to access it. “Web traffic originating from Firefox will be routed through the best available VPN location in the US,” Mozilla says, and the feature can be toggled on or off.
Firefox says it hasn't placed any restrictions on how you can use the new feature and that it won't affect your browsing speed either. However, if you sign up for a paid Mozilla VPN service, you should remove the free VPN option to avoid duplication, the company says.
Regarding data collection, Mozilla states that it only collects technical data necessary to ensure the reliability and security of Firefox VPN,” it said. “For example, we may log a successful or unsuccessful connection, or record that your account used 2 GB of data on a given day.”
After three months, the logs associated with your account are deleted. However, Mozilla has said it will never log the sites you visit or track the content you download.
Khaki was one of the first to report the new Mozilla feature.
